Rafael Nadal Threatens Lawsuit Over Renewed Doping Allegations

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — In the week since Maria Sharapova revealed her positive test for the recently banned substance meldonium, other players have had to face revived doping allegations.

Discussing Sharapova’s announcement on the French show “Le Grand 8” last week, the former French minister of health and sport Roselyne Bachelot accused Rafael Nadal.

“They just don’t reveal positive tests or the sanctions given in tennis,” Bachelot said in French. “But curiously, you will learn that a tennis player had an injury that keeps him or her off the courts for months, like the famous injury of Rafael Nadal that kept him off the court for seven months — it’s very certainly due to a positive test.”

In that seven-month stretch Bachelot mentioned, in 2012 and 2013, Nadal missed the Olympics and the United States Open, citing knee problems, and then missed the Australian Open, citing a stomach virus.

In the wake of Bachelot’s remarks, an unlikely constellation of Spanish sports organizations, including the soccer team Real Madrid, quickly rallied behind Nadal, and on Sunday, Nadal thanked those who had supported him. He then lashed out at Bachelot with uncharacteristic vitriol, saying that although he had heard similar accusations a couple of times before, “this is going to be the last one because I’m going to sue her.”

He added: “I am tired about these things. I let it go a few times in the past. No more.”

Nadal also pledged to sue anyone else who made a similar comment in the future.

Many of the previous accusations and insinuations directed at Nadal also came from France, where he has had his greatest dominance, winning the French Open nine times.

In 2011, Nadal took offense when Yannick Noah, the 1983 French Open champion, wrote in the French newspaper Le Monde that Spanish athletes were dominant because of a “magic potion.” Nadal told reporters that Noah should be stopped from appearing in the newspaper again because his comments were “completely stupid.”

The next year, Nadal was angered by a puppet show on French television, “Les Guignols,” which featured a skit in which a Nadal caricature used his urine to turbocharge a sport utility vehicle. Nadal threatened to sue the program for “unacceptable and damaging insinuations,” but no suit was ever filed.

Just before last year’s French Open, the cover of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo featured a musclebound tennis player with a headband like Nadal’s stuck with syringes.

Nadal said Sunday that he did not pursue legal action against his accusers in the past because he did not think that they were serious.

“But a minister of France should be serious,” he added. “This time is the time to go against her. We’re going to sue her.”

The International Tennis Federation supported Nadal.

“The accusations by Roselyne Bachelot against Nadal are not only surprising, they are also incorrect,” the federation’s statement said. “The names of all players sanctioned for a violation of tennis’s anti-doping programme are announced publicly, as demanded by the rules of the programme and the worldwide anti-doping code.”

Sharapova has drawn fractured responses, even if her case is far more clear-cut than the allegations aimed at Nadal. Many tennis players expressed a desire to withhold judgment. The French player Kristina Mladenovic, though, castigated Sharapova.

“You start to think she’s not a champion; she cheated,” Mladenovic told the French newspaper Le Parisien. “Even if it wasn’t forbidden before, it’s the principle. Of course you doubt, and you think that she hasn’t deserved all that she won and did. It’s dreadful, but it’s good that it’s finally out.

“I respected her for her career but not for the person that she is because she wasn’t polite or nice; let’s be honest. So with what’s happening now, there won’t remain a lot of people to like her.”

The retired American player Ashley Harkleroad, who hit a career-high ranking of 39th in 2003, suggested in a Facebook post that Sharapova’s use of meldonium explained why Harkleroad was winless against her.

“I’m really disappointed because LIKE YOU, I dedicated part of my life to tennis, but I always did it HONESTLY!” Harkleroad wrote. “No wonder I always lost, I never stood a chance.”

Eugenie Bouchard, who lost to Sharapova in the semifinals at the 2014 French Open and in the quarterfinals at last year’s Australian Open, expressed deep disappointment as well.

“To think of your childhood idol and wonder if it was a lie, it really affected me a lot,” Bouchard told reporters.

John Isner, though, said he could not pass judgment on Sharapova for taking a substance that was not banned until this year.

“I’m going to take her word for the fact that she was using it for the issues she was having with her health,” Isner, the top-ranked American man, said, adding, “I’m not going to call her a liar or anything like that.”

And Ana Ivanovic, a longtime rival of Sharapova’s who lost to her in the 2008 Australian Open final, said, “I think it’s just a little bit sad that some people will doubt such a good career.”